Beyonce is going to be Wonder Woman. God help us all. (Your various religious beliefs aside.)

When I shared this shocking news with my boyfriend, he pointed out to me that she had previously stated that she wanted to play Diana Prince a.k.a. Wonder Woman. I remembered him previously mentioning this in conversation so I did some digging and lo and behold… An L.A. Times blog.

Now to the outsider, this might not seem like a big deal, but let’s take a closer look.

Beyonce is a VERY successful singer, but does a lot more on the side. Her most notable movie at the moment is “Dreamgirls” and ironically her spotlight was stolen by former American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson. Her other movies (sidekick role in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” aside) are considerably less notable and unsuccessful.

Now let’s take a look at some of the other comic book movies featuring female superheroes. “Electra” wasn’t very critically acclaimed, especially after the mess that was “Daredevil.” And despite Halle Berry’s acting prowess (which may very well be an on again off again sort of thing), “Catwoman” was also a total flop.

At this point the movie could be saved, but heres some more reasons why it won’t be.

Joss Whedon, the genius behind “Firefly,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog,” was traded in for Stuart Beattie and David Elliot, who wrote “GI Joe: Rise of Cobra,” which hasn’t done quite as well as any of Whedon’s work.

Directing will be John Moore, who directed “Max Payne.” What’s that? You don’t remember that movie? Yeah, I thought so. Beattie at least has a few good movies such as “Australia” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise behind him.

Shall we add it up?

Mediocre actress/hot singer + Unsuccessful angle on genre + Fairly unsuccessful writers and director = Probably not going to be a good movie.

I really hope they prove my theory wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now onto more pleasant news – Kodansha is coming to the U.S.!

Kodansha is Japan’s largest publisher and has licensed a ton of manga titles to U.S. manga publishers. They’ll be putting their office in NYC and their line, Kodansha Comics, will be distributed by Random House, who has been their partner in recent years through Del Rey Manga.

Kodansha Vice President and board member Yoshio Irie and general manager Tomoko Suga will be heading up Kodansha USA Publishing (the company’s publishing name.) They have already announced two classic titles as Kodansha USA’s first releases, Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo and Ghost in the Shell by Shirow Masamune, which were previously published by Dark Horse Comics.

This doesn’t really surprise anyone who’s been watching the manga publishing industry for awhile. Kodansha has been killing its licenses as they expired with other publishers ever since they partnered up with Random House and Del Ray Manga in 2003. Earlier this year, they finally announced that they would not be renewing any licenses with Tokyopop, which Tokyopop editors said they had known about for awhile. The company had been publishing many of Kodansha’s hit series, such as Sailor Moon, Chobits, Love Hina and Beck.